[The Tyrant Lizard]

What do you think is the best fantasy world out there.

Obviously I think the Malazan world is brilliant, and suitably vast. I also like the Drenai realm and the Warhammer world, which probably has more world build up than anything else I've read about.

incidently, I think the worst is the Shannara world. As a land based on earth I am baffled as to how small it is.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

I've always liked The Land in SRD's Covenant series. I'm not saying it's the best out there, but deserves mention in the discussion.

[Salt-Man Z]

I have to go with the world of Malaz, hands down.

A close second would be the Beklan Empire (and surrounding lands) from Richard Adams' Shardik and Maia. I've been hoping and hoping he'd write a third book set after Shardik, possibly dealing more with the land of Zakalon, but at this point (he's 88) I've pretty much given up.

I love Donaldson's stuff, but his worlds don't have (to me) the sense of existing outside of the story. He's said as much, that he only creates as much of the world as needed to tell the story, plus a little extra to make the world appear bigger than the story. But in doing so, it's not his worlds that are memorable to me. Same with my other favorite authors, Card and Stover.

Looking at sci-fi, I love reading about Asimov's robots/empire/foundation universe, and Reynolds' Revelation Space universe is interesting (though I've yet to read beyond the trilogy.) And I love the Star Wars EU.

[paladin]

The Malazan world and Steph Swainston's Four Lands world(or more particularly, The Shift.. where else can sharks talk and drive cars made from living organs?)

[Obdigore]

There are many kinds of Best, in my opinion.

Most Believably best? Probably Modesitt's Recluce world.

Most Epic Worldbuilding best? Wu, hands down from what I have read. (Malazan)

All around best world, if the author or others could explore it more and flesh it out like it seems it COULD be done based on what is mentioned already and where it might go in the future? Tie Between the Butcher's Codex Alera world and Wu (Malazan), imo.

[caladanbrood]

paladin;327175 said:

The Malazan world and Steph Swainston's Four Lands world(or more particularly, The Shift.. where else can sharks talk and drive cars made from living organs?)

Aye, the Shift is intruiging in it's possibilities, I'd like to see more of it:)

Most of my favourites are sci-fi universes, to be honest, but in epic fantasy, the MBotF and aSoIaF worlds have to be my favourites, I think.

[Macros]

Kelewan, jsut to be different
I really do like Kelewan though, always intriqued by it (horrible spelling there but not going bakc to fix it)

[Werthead]

Martinworld (for lack of a better term), Planet WoT is pretty good, I have a soft spot for Midkemia and Abeir-toril, Bas-Lag, and Earwa.

Planet Malaz is pretty cool, but I have some issues with the depth of the worldbuilding and I'm not entirely sure why this planet has not been burned to a cinder by the various mega-powerful factions fighting across it.

In SF the Confederation from PFH's Night's Dawn Trilogy is probably my favourite, but I quite like the Hegemony of Man (from Simmons' Hyperion Cantos) and the Imperium from Dune.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

The world in the Dark Tower is pretty interesting. You don't see too many fantasy/scifi/western/post-apocalyptic worlds out there.

[Aimless]

I dunno about best, but one of my favourite worlds in fantasy is Duncan's Pandemia, despite its simplicity.

Pratchett's Discworld is, IMO, the most useful world out there.

I'm a bit out of touch with modern Fantasy, but I think Jordan's WoT is still one of the best realised worlds in fantasy today, as is Hobb's whatsitcalled.

[cjd262e]

Obviously, Salvatore's books are not as sophisticated as other stuff that I have read, but I always liked the underdark in the "Dark Elf" trilogy. It still stands out to me as being pretty unique.

[Wordmerchant]

I really like Carey's Terre d'Ange - As an "alt earth" it succeeds very well.

[Mentalist]

Hmm
Perumov's Valley of the Mages seems like a good place to retire to and settle down

Lukyanenko's "wold" takes it, though, because it's essentially the real world with a few extra twists...

[Kulp Diet]

Can't help it. Gotta Say Middle Earth.
Tolkein was ages ahead of his time building a world where the reader could intuitively feel the geography and its effect on its indigenous peoples as well as the foreign travellers. Perhaps its just nostalgia, but nothing surpasses the simple charm of Middle Earth for me.

Cheesiest world ever: Xanth :-p

[Optimus Prime]

1. Burn/Wu
Sheer scope, different cultures, history, etc.
2. Middle-Earth--Really started the whole "world-building" thing. The amount of history and epic scale of the tragedy will always reign.
3. Earwa, from Bakker's PoN series. Very "Tolkien-esque" in the terms of ancient men and their story. Seems there's a lot more to reveal as well.
4. "Martinworld", though we still don't know much about the Far East and what really lies there, or the south for that matter, it's still awesome.
5. Midkemia. WHile the story is mostly retread, Feist did a great job with the worldbuilding....too bad the story doesn't match up.

[lfex]

Tolkien is still first for me. Amount of work he put into creating Middle-earth has no equals. Bakker's Earwa and Erikson's Wu come next, after that probably Feist's Midkemia.

[Aptorian]

One of the things that annoy me about some... most... fantasy series is the lack of the fantastic, the imaginary... something magical. It's basically just planet earth with some exotic creatures made up to populate it. You might have some different planes but for all intents and purposes the story is most often about a medieval society with mages.

That's why I liked China Mievilles world of Bas-lag. Where magic can be drilled right out of the earth, where gravity becomes so strong that it opens up dimensional rifts, chaos storms warp continents, etc. And the races are truly exotic and not always easily understood.

[Aimless]

Meanwhile, one of the things that bothers me the most about these Earth-copies is how poor copies they are.

That' why I get so pleased when an author includes things like music, dance, sports, etc in a cool way.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

I see the point, but if you get too far away from earth-based, it starts to seem like scifi instead of fantasy.

[Battalion]

Even though it was a bit of a pirate of Warhammer, and was intended for kids, I used to love the Fighting Fantasy world of Titan. It had two good books (Titan and Out of the Pit) for references on the world, and about fifty role-play books set in the world, plus a few novels set there two. I liked it.